Two weeks ago, I attended a session of the Whitefish/Flathead County interlocal agreement negotiations. Someone should have brought doughnuts, or at least popcorn.
It appears that Flathead County will have 12 months to review the 65 land-use ordinances imposed upon the doughnut (and the city itself) since 2005 when the interlocal was implemented, and request modifications where needed. The city would then have 12 months “to complete a review and re-enactment of [the ordinances]” to which the county must agree.
If agreement can’t be reached after the review, despite mediation appointed by the district court, either side can vote to terminate the interlocal pact one year after serving notice of withdrawal.
In other words, the worst parts of Whitefish rule will be re-visited. If Whitefish won’t make changes to the satisfaction of Flathead County, interlocal ends.
Of course, all this is contingent on whether the Whitefish City Council and the Flathead commissioners vote to approve.
While many feel the changes should have been the arrangement from the start, the “smart growth” faction is fighting to keep the status quo. Among other things, they are circulating a pseudo-petition/form letter which sums up their position: “Whitefish is not a city and a doughnut” but a “community.” The form letter opposes any amendment to the interlocal, opposes commissioner control, and calls for an “elected community council.”
First off, in a real community, at least in a free society, all citizens share equal political rights. But the growthers’ “community” claim channels George Orwell’s “Animal Farm:” “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
As for opposition to amendments, during the public comments one person made a striking argument against changes: She didn’t want to see the doughnut regulations “dismantled,” because she and others had spent so much time on them.
Well, I’m sure Ford spent a lot of time on the Edsel, too, but quantity of effort doesn’t always guarantee quality of output.
What about the community/township idea? Current Montana law doesn’t provide for such a thing, and shouldn’t.
Practically speaking, with the “brains” we now have, spread so thin over our existing layers of government, adding another layer is insane.
Philosophically speaking, even if Montana had enough brains, who might be attracted to this “community council?” That’s easy…folks who think planning and zoning is fun, who love meetings, who dote on bureaucratic, legalistic mumbo-jumbo, who would enjoy nothing more than the power to micromanage the property (and lives) of everyone around them. Would you be interested in something like that?
If you are, there are others really interested in making sure you never get the chance, and thank goodness for that.
In a way, the Whitefish doughnut issue is a microcosm of our national politics. One main reason national Democrats might get shellacked in November is because they overreached. As the Republicans before them, they felt the latest election results signaled a durable change in the political landscape, a mandate. Both parties, and their pet “experts,” failed to understand that consent to govern can be withdrawn by the governed at the next election.
I suppose in Whitefish, the former 5-1 “working majority” felt they enjoyed a durable mandate, especially with an agreement that completely disenfranchised doughnut residents.
It was a fundamentally unjust setup, which any right-thinking American would take steps to correct. Instead, Whitefish refused to come back to the county for any changes, and then, when the Flathead County decided to exit, sued all the way to the Supreme Court to get its way. For want of a better description, council behaved like, as P.J. O’Rourke puts it, teenagers with car keys and whiskey.
Now, with the Oldsmobile upside down in the river, the question remains whether there are enough grownups around on the commission and the council to clean up the wreckage. If not, there’s always the next election.